Evolutionary game theory (EGT) [1]} provides an appropriate tool to study the evolution of cooperative behaviour in social dilemmas, as they are governed by institutional incentives [2]}, [3]}, [4]}, [5]}, [6]}, [7]}, [8]}, [9]} and prior commitments [10]}, [11]}, [12]}, [13]}.
However, prior work has not addressed how incentives influence commitment-based behaviours and how they can be used to efficiently ensure high levels of compliance and cooperation.
On the one hand, existing EGT models of commitments assume that commitments are regimented where compensation is assumed enforceable from dishonest committers (i.e. those who committed but then defect in the interaction) [14]}, [10]}, [16]}, [17]}.
Since individuals can decide whether not to honour an adopted commitment—with abundant evidence of commitment breaching in both controlled experiments and real-world scenarios [18]}, [19]}, [20]}, [21]}—these works did not explain what mechanisms can ensure high levels of participation in and compliance with an adopted commitment. For example, as will be studied in this paper, one might ask whether positive (reward) or negative (punishment) incentive is more efficient for achieving this.
